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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The start of the Bargello Art quilt

Yesterday evening I had some time to work on my quilt. After having the color strips laying out for several days I narrowed it down to the color pallets that I wanted to use and an approximate size that I wanted.

My inspiration for this quilt is the beautiful colors of a summer sunset. Maybe I was just thinking it would be so nice to have a beautiful late evening summer sunset versus the normal Chicago winter evening of a fade from gray to black.

The process involved me whittling down the number of color strips to 16 (I started with 40) I played with this over a period of several days until I came up with something that I really liked. I also used a red filter to help determine color value in the fabrics.

The process up until now has been fabric and color selection as the first step. Then would be the cutting of the strips (I was able to skip this step since the fabric pack was already cut into strips).

Step 2: I played with about 20 strips, playing with color placement and final selection, this process took a couple of days. I viewed it in daylight and under artificial light and just gave it a day to sit without looking and then coming back to it.

Step 3: iron the strips and apply some spray starch to help increase the hand of the fabric.

Step 4: sew the strips together using perfect 1/4 inch seams in straight lines. I sewed them together in groups of 4, then 2 groups of 8 and then one final group. This allowed for no one piece of fabric to be overly handled.

Step 5: then to the ironing board and ironed all the seams in one direction, flipped it over and ironed from the top making sure there was no hidden pleating from the ironing.

18 colors that I played with

I took some time to play with placement of the fabrics until I found

one that I really liked.

The view through the red filter, this allows me to see the color values so I can make sure I have what I want. In this case I wanted to have a variety from light to darks.

The final 16 choices sewn together and pressed.

The next steps include checking over the seams to make sure that everything looks even and straight. The I will sew the 2 ends pieces together turning into a tube. Then I get to cut it all apart and sew it together again!

I am off to New Orleans for the next 4 days do no sewing room time for me until next week :)